Art Culture Design DozenQ Hotplugs Interviews

DozenQ – Max Galli

admin June 5, 2015

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This entry is part 12 of 20 in the series DozenQ

Max Galli has been working as a professional illustrator and graphic designer during the last 20 years, producing hundreds of colourful, 60s-influenced drawings, illustrations and commercial graphic designs. His trademark swinging Sixties girls, shy and sexy at the same time, appeared in posters, records and CD covers, packagings and more, making his very own Pantone marker-based style a must for the discerning 60s loving collectors all over the world.

Currently he’s contributing with his illustrations and articles to The New Untouchables (which promotes 21st Century Modernist & Sixties Inspired Underground Music Culture with an International Mindset) ‘NUTsMag‘ and Eyeplug Magazine.

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01. What first inspired you to veer towards the world of Art, Design and Illustration?

I think women (aunts, cousins, acquaintances, some girls and women around…) must have been one of the main sources of inspiration, so far. Along with late 60s-mid 70s TV shows like UFO, Space:1999 and Doctor Who (the Tom Baker one), since I was seriously impressed by the design of furnishings and environments.

02. What are some of your early reference points and how have they grown or changed over time?

My reference points have always been quite diverse. When I was a child, it was basically my father’s pictures of models, actresses and landscapes from the 60s and 70s. A few years after, when I was in my early teens, it was comics. I became a very good comic strips reader and collector, focusing my imagination on the 1965-1975 graphic style, you know, the likes of Crepax, Peellaert, Forest, Moebius, Rostagno, Maroto, Pazienza. In my late teens it was fine arts and illustration: Alphonse Mucha, John Waterhouse, William Morris, the Preraphaelites, the whole Art Nouveau phenomenon, Art Déco, Bauhaus, Op-Art…

03. What form does your modern work tend to take?

Well, I love drawing 60s-style pin ups! The female characters I draw are always sexy and sweet at the same time, and never too explicit – I think eroticism is an imaginative issue, not a blatant one. I have my wife and a lot of friends and acquaintances who – sometimes unconsciously – inspired me.

04. What sort of themes, mediums and techniques do you employ?

The main theme has always been the 60s-early 70s, since I was 19. You can’t really stop me being fascinated by that period, can you? My favourite media are pigment ink pens and ProMarker and Pantone markers, which I only use on Letraset marker paper. I never used a computer for my illustrations, nor I ever used Photoshop for colouring. I’m an old school cat.

05. What has been the re-action and feedback so far to what you try to do?

Honestly, I have a few thousand fans from all over the world, but a good 60% of them are from English-speaking countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia). The funny and amazing thing is that many of them are from outside the International Mod-60s Scene.

06. Have you managed to exhibit or publish your work so far, and if so how and where?

I was lucky enough to have quite a few exhibitions around (three in London, one in Spain, 4 in Italy) and I published my first illustration back in 1994, for an Italian literary magazine. There are also a few books of mine around, the latest one, “Midnight To Six” is having a great success, both with public and critics.

07. What other factors come into play whilst in the process of creating a new piece?

It just depends on how I feel in that precise moment. Inspiration and music play a fundamental role, though. Usually I listen to some slow, sweet hammond organ stuff. Things like 60s-70s library music, 60s easy listening in general…

08. How do you spread the word about what you do and who you are, as an Artist?

Usually I do this through facebook and my own website. But I also like to know new people and meeting friends and keeping them updated about what I do.

09. Have you collaborated on other Art based projects, if so who with and what was the outcome?

I tried to join other project with other people, but I think that like mindness should be an important factor to make people work well together.

10. Who else do you rate from the world of Art, Design and Illustration both past present and future?

I’d say US illustrators Peter Max and Bob Peak and Spanish Luis Roca and Esteban Maroto, Italian designers Joe Colombo and Anna Castelli Ferrieri for the past times, for now and the future there’s a great choice of very good artists, I can only remember a few names, but I like their artwork: Steven Millington, Marty Street and Kristian Hughes from UK, Alex Barbarroja and Marcos Torres from Spain, Sam Paglia from Italy and a few others from both sides of the sea.

11. Does your work ever get you into trouble at all?

Well, it happened sometimes. For example, I had a MySpace profile blocked four years ago, because of the naked women I showed in my illustrations. They didn’t like my illustrations, so I didn’t like being on MySpace. As a result of them blocking my art, I’m not using MySpace since then.